The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

Claudia rolled her eyes and crossed herself before opening the bedroom door. “Come in, then.”

The old man came into the room, his expression as happy as Hope had ever seen it. He stopped in front of her. “You look beautiful, Hope. So much like your grandmother on our wedding day.”

She’d never known her grandmother, but it pleased her for her grandfather to make the comparison.

His expression turned regretful. “I neglected her shamefully. Your mother too, but I’ve learned my lesson. I want better for you. I want you to be happy. Marrying Luciano makes you happy, doesn’t it, child?”

“Yes.” A little uncertain still about her future, but full of joy at the prospect of spending it with him. “Very happy.”

At this both the old man and Claudia beamed with pleasure. For once, they were in one accord.

“Then it was worth it. I did the right thing.”

Did he mean sending Luciano to visit her in Athens? She had to agree. “Yes.”

He turned to Claudia. “I suppose you have a timetable for this shindig?”

Luciano’s mother bristled with annoyance. “It will happen when it happens. I have planned the events, but a wedding cannot be rushed to fit a businessman’s schedule.”

Surprisingly, Joshua meekly agreed and left the room.

“I think you scared him, Mamma.” Martina grinned from the other side of the room where she had been laying out Hope’s going away outfit.

“Ai, ai, ai. That man. Nothing scares him, but at least he has left us in peace.”

Only there was very little of that over the next hour as the final preparations were made for Hope’s walk down the aisle.

It was to be a traditional Sicilian ceremony and celebration to follow. While she looked forward to becoming Luciano’s wife, all the pomp and ceremony surrounding the event had numbed her emotions with fatigue. So, when her grandfather escorted her to the front of the church, she was in a haze of anesthetized exhaustion with no room in her foggy brain for fear or last-minute doubts.

And for that she was grateful.

When Joshua placed her hand in Luciano’s, a look passed between the two men that she did not understand. There had been an indefinable tension between them since her grandfather’s arrival in Italy. She wondered if they had had a business falling-out. She hadn’t asked Luciano about it because although he had not gone back to treating her like the untouchable woman, he had made sure they were never alone together.

His hand was warm as it surrounded hers and she pushed her worries about his relationship with her grandfather to the back of her mind.

“So, the pill was not so bitter to swallow, was it?”

Luciano turned slowly at the sound of Joshua Reynolds’ voice. The old man looked pleased with himself.

Would he be so happy when his business began to lose important contracts? Luciano did not think so, but he merely raised his brow. “Marriage is for life. It is in my own interests to make the best of taking Hope as my wife.”

“You’re a shark in business,” Joshua said with satisfaction, “but traditional when it comes to family, aren’t you?”

Luciano did not bother to reply. Joshua would have ample opportunity to learn for himself what a shark in business a Sicilian man blackmailed into marriage could be.

The other man did not seem bothered by Luciano’s silence. “You won’t make the same mistake I did and ignore her. She’s a special woman, but I messed up my chance with her. We’re not close and we could have been.” Regret weighted his voice, making him sound old and tired. “She used to come into my office at home and sit on the rug by my feet playing with her dolls.” A faraway look entered Joshua’s pale eyes. “I guess she was about six. She’d ask me every night to tuck her in. I was too busy most of the time. She stopped asking.”

The old man sighed. “She stopped coming into my office too. I wish I could say she had the love of my housekeeper or a nanny, but I hired for efficiency, not warmth.”

The picture he was painting of Hope’s childhood was chilling. Having been raised in the warmth of a typical Italian household, if a wealthy one, Luciano shuddered inwardly at the emotional wasteland Hope had been reared in.

“She is very giving.” All things considered, that was pretty surprising.

“Takes after her grandmother and mother in that. They were like her. Soft. Caring.” Joshua turned his gaze to Hope. “Beautiful too.”

“As you say.” Watching his new wife smile as she talked to Mamma, he wondered why Joshua had felt the need to blackmail him into marriage with Hope. “She is sweet and lovely. She would have landed her own husband soon enough. Your measures were not necessary.”